Two sisters take advantage of the cool morning to work on a set of new pottery bowls. The woman on the right uses the end of a thin reed to decorate the rim edge of a finished, small bowl while her sister, at centre, is working to smooth a large coiled vessel. Her daughter sits next to her, kneading the dense clay and adding burnt shell to the mixture to make the unique paste that distinguishes the pottery of The Bahamas, known today as Palmetto Ware.
A set of freshly made bowls and a cassava griddle lie on mats and in basketry frames – the patterns from their weave will be impressed into the ceramic bases as a permanent record of these fragile, organic arts that do not survive the passage of time (unlike ceramics).
Behind them is a pile of firewood ready for the next stage in the manufacturing process: the firing of the ceramics to harden the clay and make the vessels useable – but with storm clouds gathering on the distant horizon, the firing may need to be postponed until the afternoon.
